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FYI - Siphon Drones
borticuscryptic
Member Posts: 2,478 Cryptic Developer
A change will be included with Season 7 that alters the behavior of Siphon Drones. We still consider this a work in progress, and are anxious to hear your feedback on the changes once they land on Tribble (no, we don't yet have a date on that).
The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.
Here's the changes as they are currently checked in:
1) Instead of immediately diminishing the target's power by a large %, the drain of each individual Siphon Drone will slowly ramp up to full capacity.
2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.
3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.
4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.
We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.
The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.
Here's the changes as they are currently checked in:
1) Instead of immediately diminishing the target's power by a large %, the drain of each individual Siphon Drone will slowly ramp up to full capacity.
2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.
3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.
4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.
We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Post edited by borticuscryptic on
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Comments
double thumbs up for doing something about siphon drones, sounds good on paper, will have to see it in action though.
now how about sci resists and spam in general, not in Season 7 i take it, maybe season 8?
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Firstly, I dispute that a carrier gives up anything at all to run these pods. Pet DPS you say? LOL, I say.
Secondly, so what if the drain takes a few seconds to ramp up? Oh you've got 50 power to a SS now, instead of 5. You've got 3 seconds now before you're drained again so you better kill all those pets double quick... Obviously this remains to be tested, but that's how it looks to me right now from that post.
Thirdly and finally, as long as the two most effective control units in the game, far outstriping anything a player can lay down, are swarms of pets there is a problem. Pets should be different (and higher across the board) types of DPS and nothing more. Giving them subsystem drains, disables and aceton beam (general control powers) to a level that is greater than a player himself could exert etc was, is and always will be a dumb idea.
Glad to see something being done, all the same. Work in progress and all that
If you want gunea pigs..... More than willing for live testing.
if someone has 9 shield power and cant move, you need half the firepower to get twice the effect, not to mention anyone seen drained down to nothing is gonna get shot at by the rest of the team immediately.
good, an oh TRIBBLE grace period will help. i suggested something similar, instead of a drain every tic, a drain every other tic, or 2 tics so getting snagged by 1 or 2 wouldn't be basicly as bad as getting snagged by 8.
i think abilities that add power should get about a 3 to 5 second grace period befor they start getting sucked away. at least this in an improvement over say using a battery and seeing nothing happen.
maybe thats why it seemed like insulaters did nothing, your own flow cap canceled it out. also your power transfer rate works agienst you here too im pretty sure. it drains faster and refills faster. high transfer rate should defend agienst the rate of drain, high insulater should defend against the magnitude of drain.
the problem is they are too sturdy, and its not hard to launch them faster then they can be destroyed. maybe there needs to be a background preparation cooldown built in for pets, your ship cant fabricate or make them ready faster then this.
you could have 5 fabricated launches per hanger ready, the rate at which you launch them is the same as always, but then when one launches a fabricate cooldown starts to replace it. currently carriers just have an unlimited supply.
with this, a carrier couldn't launch pets at a rate faster then they could be destroyed indefinitely, which is a large part of what makes dealing with all this spam nearly impossible.
Anyways the changes sound fine as long as they do what they are meant to do... Based on what you said they will do the same thing it will just require you to make setups that mesh well with their downtime is all.
As far as weapons power with pets they pretty much have no weapons power backing them up you are lucky if a per hits over 250 damage per pulse. I remember back when they actually had dps but people had problems with a KDF player creating around 30 or so pets.
I especially like a balance pass on flow caps and power insulators.
I feel like right now you need to put siphons close to somebody and shoot them with the leach for gg, which is too strong. If you dial them back a little, maybe I just add polarons in and again, gg. So dial them back again, now I need Tyken's too. See where I'm going?
While the changes look really good, the Drones are part of the Energy Drain Circle of Life, so if it only takes one more drain stacked on top to get back to current levels we're going to be spinning our wheels. It's going to take more than one pass. We might end up facing the fact that some drains shouldn't stack with each other, or drains should have diminishing returns.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
In my opinion the details of the balance change aren't nearly as important as the active response to PvP feedback. Kudos, Cryptic, you just earned 1 million diplomacy xp!
It looks like a nice contradiction to me. It can't be effective and easily resisted at the same time. If it's easy to resist then it's easy to get rid of it and it's not effective at all.
These changes give me the feeling that the drones will only affect bad players only, those who don't know how to easily get rid of the drones, which means insignificant targets in a pvp situation. Power drain abilities should be able to remain effective against good and skilled opponents, othersiwe they have no use at all, and it should be even more effective since the carrier sacrifices 80% of its dps.
Again, the major issue with science abilities is that most of them are easy to counter, which leads to completely uneffective powers except on bad players, and you're about to do this mistake again with the siphon drones.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
*turns it all in for Fleet Marks*
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
every danube launch should include 1 runabout and 2 type8/10 shuttles
did you have time to look into DEM?
Doing something else about that one would be nice.
They should have a pet cool down on tractor... so when one players pets tractor a target... it should be at least a global tractor beam cool down until the next one can tractor.
I give 10 million Marauding points to you if you make nausicaan ship have ability to use nausicaan tech... Lots of fleet marks!
Why not removing every sci carrier power ability instead? Only allowing scis to WATCH the game without playing it. Would be far more interesting isn't it?
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
With some fleet marks rewarded for pvp, you could keep your million Xp points :P
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
My main char is a sci flying a carrier, and I'm sick of seeing players asking for nerfs of sci abilities and pets and then wondering why scis suck and are supposedly useless in pvp... :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Sci pets? What sci pets? Pet's are just pets. What sci abilities have people been wanting to nerf?
Lern2sci without pets doing the work for you.
All I was saying that Siphons is not the only pet problem. It would be two-faced, and outright convenience to bemoan the Siphons and argue that the Danubes are fine.
A escort-carrier with Danubes was never a good idea. Ever.
A Kar'fi can shut somebody down, by and large, with only the Drones and the Leach. I don't even feel the loss of dps I could get out of S'kuls or Fer'jai because the drains are a force multiplier (weakened shields, no defense bonus) and I can still unload with BO3, PSW3 backed by particle gens, maybe an attack pattern and HYT, or be a real scumbag and TRIBBLE out a tric pattern. That's while tossing TSS3 or HE3 or Sci Team 3 around.
If Drones can shut somebody down on their own (and I'm not convinced they should) it should take multiple rounds of inaction from the opponent. I like the ramping up, because a drain build should need to root the target and give the Drones time to work instead of just getting into the same zipcode and launching.
I think if I fly with the loadout I cited above (Leach and Drones, BO3, PSW3, etc.) then I should be shooting at a weakened but live target. I think a drain build should be forced to cut into the best dps and healing options and to stack the drains across their buff bar in order to get a shutdown. High level, high Aux Tyken's or Energy Siphon (taking Cmdr and Lt. Cmdr slots to be sure to have one available), Target Subs (no BO for you, well, not right away), Aceton Assimilators (still giving up armor or something for it) should be required on top of the Drones. So if they catch a Sci Team or use a battery then Polarons will still have me praying for a proc instead of things being inevitable like they are now; same (I think) with Thermionic Torps.
And a shutdown capable build should damn sure need to slot 4 flow caps. It doesn't matter if the Drones take longer if I can still slot 4 shield cap consoles with my what, 1.2 modifier?
Again, bort, thanks. They should name something cooler than a freighter after you.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Power drains a few months ago. Now it's completely useless since you can resist it. Tractor beams have been nerfed too, they used to be stronger with their level, it's not the case anymore.
Now people are whinning as soon as a new kind of debuff is added to the game. There's no mystery in the useless of scis in pvp: devs listening to players whishes. Not feedback, plain and selfish wishes. :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Siphons aren't new. Siphons users have claimed their overpowered nature, and explained it logically many times on the forums now. I guess those players are especially selfish. :rolleyes:
p.s ty for helping balance the game for the good of all players bort and cryptic!
Your Ramming Speed III deals 52098 (99235) Kinetic Damage(Critical) to Remus.
What? Nobody whined about power drains like Tyken's and BTxS. We did whine about the poorly tested sci resists that ended up killing power drains and many other science abilities, begging the devs not to put them onto live until they were ready.
For some reason, in the eyes of the care bear masses every bad change Cryptic makes is somehow our fault. I guess they can't handle the inconvenient truth of the matter.
I'm still waiting to hear about these "sci pets" of yours by the way. What are theses sci pets, and where can I get them. How do they differ from normal pets exactly?
I'm not talking about the drones, i've tried them and i know it's a bit too effective as it is. I was answering to someone telling that the tractor beam pets had to be nerfed. I assume this guy doesn't know that you need several tractor beams and a constand use of it if you want to immobilize a target for a few seconds in a match. A single tractor beam has little use since tacs are permabuffed (and buffs also allow to resist to debuff abilities, which is one of the major design flaw in this game). You will hardly catch them with their double attack pattern omega, evasive maneuvers, dilithium burst, etc. Or you need to use a ridiculous combo of several debuffs to get them immobilized for a few seconds. That's why you may need some pets to do the job.
Currently tractor beam pets are the only thing able to use the tractor beam efficiently in pvp, because the players'one is too limited in duration, or whatever, and since targets have permanent resists. I know some of you can be annoyed by them but it's their purpose, and as long as the buffs and anti debuff abilities are tied to the same powers it'll be a necessary evil if you want to see some scis in pvp.
If one day the devs create specific anti debuff powers providing no buff at all and remove all anti debuff power to current buffs then we may be able to start an interesting discussion about carrier pets but now it's one of the last working abilities scis suing carriers have.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.